Posts made in May, 2013

Mills-Peninsula has received an “A” grade from The Leapfrog Group in its Spring 2013 Hospital Safety Score. This is the third consecutive time Mills-Peninsula has earned an “A” rating for hospital safety from Leapfrog. The Hospital Safety Score grades general acute care hospitals on how safe they are for patients. It is calculated twice each year using publicly available data on preventable medical errors, injuries, accidents and infections at hospitals.

A panel of patient safety experts provided guidance to The Leapfrog Group to calculate the grades from A to F. The panel selected 26 measures of hospital safety data, analyzed the data and determined the weight of each measure.

The award recognizes Mills-Peninsula for treating stroke patients with 85 percent or higher compliance to American Heart Association/American Stroke Association standards of care for at least 24 consecutive months and achieving 75 percent or higher compliance with six of 10 quality measures in the Get With The Guidelines program.

The quality measures include aggressive use of medications, such as antithrombotics, anticoagulation therapy, deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis, cholesterol reducing drugs and smoking cessation – all aimed at reducing death and disability and improving the lives of stroke patients.

In April 2013, nearly 200 scientists and clinicians from all over the world attended a conference called “Workshop on Innovation toward an Artificial Pancreas.” Among the physician researchers was David C. Klonoff, M.D., FACP, Fellow AIMBE, medical director of Mills-Peninsula’s Diabetes Research Institute.

New information on the current status of the artificial pancreas and the latest enabling technologies to advance this field was presented at the meeting. The purpose of the two-day conference was to have a multi-disciplinary discussion of advances and prospective areas of research that would accelerate the development and delivery of a wearable, automated artificial pancreas for individuals with diabetes.

Dr. Klonoff, was on the planning committee of National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) / U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and chaired a session on “New Developments in Modeling, Algorithms and Technology. He also spoke at the meeting on the topic of mHealth (mobile health), delivering health care via mobile devices such as smartphones and wearable body sensors.

Mills-Peninsula has received official designation from San Mateo County as a STEMI (ST segment elevation myocardial infarction) receiving center. This is significant because now patients experiencing the most serious type of heart attack can be sent to the Mills-Peninsula Medical Center to receive treatment. Mills-Peninsula is one of only a few hospitals in the area to receive this designation.

The STEMI project is a collaboration of the county, other hospitals in the community and emergency medical services (EMS) to ensure heart attack patients receive the highest standard of cardiac care. This coordinated effort results in a more rapid time to treatment for this most serious form of heart attack. The official start date of the program was May 1.

“We are proud of the care we provide to our patients. For many years, we have diligently worked to improve and expedite the care we provide to our patients,” said Mills-Peninsula Cardiovascular Advance Practice Nurse Sarah Newsom Healy, R.N., CNS, N.P.

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The Mills-Peninsula newsroom provides media and the community with timely access to the latest news about our organization, medical services and breakthrough treatments, community benefit activities and other timely health care updates, including news from our affiliate Sutter Maternity & Surgery Center in Santa Cruz.

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